


We are all of us haunted and haunting.

by Kaesteranya



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-04
Updated: 2011-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-18 23:23:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesteranya/pseuds/Kaesteranya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A study in how to fall apart, and come back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We are all of us haunted and haunting.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt, “the gravity of love”.
> 
> The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for June 21, 2009. It references a line from the novel “Lullaby”, by Chuck Palahniuk. The titles of each of the segments in this fic are also taken from different 31 Days and 52 Flavors themes.

**A crow buries its secret.**

Their last fuck is, in totality, the result of ten years of accumulated blood, sweat, tears and metaphorical shit storms between them, but the immediate reasons for its occurrence were more due to the fact that one of them let go by not letting go and the other one didn’t take that so well. They live on brutal honesty, thrive on it, and no logical definition of ‘brutal honesty’ includes failing to properly tell one’s sort-of lover that it has to end by smiling/insisting that everything’s all right/fucking him instead.

So that is how it all comes down: a fight down at the entrance, a trail of destruction from the doors all the way to the room, wrecked furniture, broken windows, sprains, scars, fractures, stained sheets and collapsing into each other/trying to tear each other apart. Fitting, perhaps, how they spread across the sheets and make love in a war zone, because it’s never been about what’s right for them. Only what works, right down to the end.

It ruined them, of course, but perhaps they never were built to last.

He’s the first up in the small hours of the morning after, to open his eyes and to the warmth of another beside him and it _hurts_ , hurts in a way that it isn’t supposed to be because it isn’t supposed to hurt at all. His clothes are a mess, but he wears them anyway. It’s a short ride back to the Estate. He’s dealt with worse before.

No one around to see him when he arrives, and from the fact that his lounge is empty, Kusakabe has probably given up on waiting for him to come back. Something breaks in him then, shatters that cold and tiny something that’s kept him moving since he woke up, and it’s all he can do to get to the shower stall.

His cellular phone’s ringing by the time he steps out; he ignores it, doesn’t even bother shutting it off. It takes real effort, getting to his office chair, fishing those cigarettes out of the drawer. The pack’s stale, doesn’t even belong to him. It was abandoned a month ago, the last time he had _that_ one in his room.

His phone’s ringing again. He leans back, puts the fag to his lips, lights up, takes a long drag. Another drag, and his fingers are shaking. Another, and it’s hard to see all of a sudden and he doesn’t want to think about why.

By the time the sun rises and Kusakabe comes in with the morning newspaper and Foundation reports, though, the pack’s in the trash can and absolutely nothing is wrong.

 **A walking study of demonology.**

She knows him, of course, because they are Family. They do not eat at the same table, are hardly ever assigned to attend to the same jobs, and can go for weeks without speaking to each other, but she knows him. Knows his face, knows his daily routine, knows just how fast and well he can hurt and extort and blackmail and kill to get what he wants. They are not friends, not even the best of acquaintances, but they are Family, and that is enough. People like them, they thrive on distance. On only knowing so much.

She does not think much of it, then, when his appearances at the Estate grow more frequent over the next few months. He is the Cloud Guardian of the Vongola, Boss’ Weapon on call. There have been many things that could have piqued his interest in the Family as of late, small matters involving box weapon raids and murder. That is all there is to it.

Chrome Dokuro arrives at the foot of the stairs and spots Hibari Kyouya’s shadow cutting across the corridor before her and she does not think much of it. She sees the set of his shoulders and hears the sharp rat-tat-tat of his feet carrying him even further away from her, and she does not think about it. Does not stop to consider that light, off-hand observation over how recently, Hibari Kyouya seems to walk like he’s running away.

 **Our breaths in winter.**

“…I’m telling you already, _it’s not going to work_.”

“And I am telling YOU that it will if YOU’LL quit being a stubborn git and ask the Varia to back us up!”

She’s come to the Boss’ office in order to deliver his usual fifth-thing-in-the-morning cup of coffee, and has apparently walked headlong into Storm and Sun ready to rip each other apart. Rain is there as well, along with Thunder and, of course, the Boss himself. Another day, another strategy meeting.

“Good morning, Boss.”

“Oh! Thank you, Chrome.”

The Boss smiles at her a little funny, like he’s relieved and scared and grateful and worried that she’s there all at the same time. Chrome sets the mug down on the table, kisses him on the cheek, and retreats to the windowsill, because Storm has thrust his finger in front of Sun’s face and Sun has fisted up his hand into Storm’s collar and maybe it isn’t such a good idea, crossing through them twice over.

“Hey, hey. No fighting, you two.”

Rain’s whole body and the tone of his voice are easy, so deceptively easy, that it takes Chrome a second more than usual to realize that he means all business, with the way he’s stepped between Storm and Sun, placing a jovial hand on each of their shoulders and quite firmly separating them with a light push.

“Maybe we ought to rethink the plan first… see if there’s something we can do different. That good by you, Boss?”

“Yes, that’s fine!”

Rain’s simple act of addressing the Boss is enough to cow the other two Guardians – they have the good sense to look a little ashamed. Apologies all around (although Boss refuses to accept them), and the lot of them are Family again, with their voices low and heads together while they plot out their next move. Chrome detaches herself from the windowsill, whisks away the remnants of Tsuna’s (nearly untouched) meal from the desk and prepares to leave. She’d open the door, except it’s already open for her.

It’s a split second of non-contact, but it’s more than enough for Chrome to catch Hibari Kyouya’s hooded eyes and the evenly pressed lines of his suit, the sharp angles of his face. He moves past her in a way that makes her certain that he would’ve moved _through_ her if he could, and by the time she turns he’s at the Boss’ desk and there’s nothing left but the sight of his back again, against the sunlight coming in from the picture windows.

“Hibari-san–”

“Make it quick, Sawada. There is a schedule to keep.”

She closes the door to the Boss’ stammered apologies.

 **Eyes meeting over the noise.**

The air surrounding the staff in the Estate the following morning is a tell-tale sign of the Bucking Horse’s imminent arrival, and, true enough, the man himself appears just an hour before lunch. He’s in the kitchen by the time Chrome comes around, all charm and sunlight, joking with the cooks and chatting up the maids. Romario is in a nearby corner, skimming over the day’s headlines.

Chrome has long decided that she likes Romario. He is his master’s shadow: it is a position that she is familiar with. She would greet him, but the Horse has spotted her over the sea of people around him and social graces must be performed.

“Hello, Chrome.”

A kiss to both cheeks: the Italian ‘hello’. A smile, paternal hands on her shoulders. Tiny little intimate invasions, the sort he lavishes on every person he meets.

“How are things? It’s been a while since I’ve seen you!”

“We are well, as always.” (Because she is never entirely alone.) “The Boss is in his office… I was going to bring him his lunch.”

“Excellent. Good to know _somebody’s_ making sure he remembers to eat.” His laugh at his own joke. “Do you think he’ll mind if I join him for today?”

“I do not think so.”

Another smile, a pat to her shoulder, and he withdraws to let her to her job. They talk on the way up, but it is more like he does the talking and she simply listens, while occasionally assuring him that she can handle the cart without assistance. Romario is their shadow now, contributing nothing but the sound of his footsteps just behind them.

The Boss is, unsurprisingly, not alone when they arrive: Storm is working on the other desk in the room, and Sasagawa Kyoko is perched on the arm of the Boss’ chair, watching him go through the reports. The Bucking Horse’s arrival merits the complete disregard of any and all pressing concerns, and Chrome remains on the sidelines, quietly setting the plates and food and cutlery down on the table in the corner.

“…the wedding plans coming along?”

“Hellish, but that’s not too surprising.”

Romario catches her gaze just as she sets the last fork in place, and she promptly follows the man out of the room.

“You were aware, I hope,” he quietly says, “that my boss is getting married.”

“Yes.”

There’s something strange about the expression on Romario’s face, the sort of look that should not belong to a happy shadow. She could ask him, but Romario is no longer paying attention to her.

“Mr. Hibari.”

Third encounter in a row, and there’s no chance to think on the reasons. With the way Hibari watches Romario, she might as well be invisible.

“Your master is here.”

“Yes, with your boss.”

No words, no sound, not even a quick and hot flash of disapproval: just a shift of the light in Hibari’s eyes, and he’s gone.

 **How terribly strange to be seventy.**

It’s easier, most days, to keep his head low and ignore it. Keeps his hands busy with work, his lips busy with sweet nothings and his million-and-one directives, his eyes sometimes on his men, other times on his wife-to-be, most times elsewhere.

Staying out of that room helps too. Too many memories. Too many ghosts that he doesn’t have the time to exorcise.

He wonders if he’ll ever have the time or the opportunity, in fact, but his family, they’ve always told him that pessimism is one suit he can’t ever wear right. Or maybe they didn’t tell him anything – he just assumes that that’s what they’re thinking. What they expect of him, because he’s their Boss. Their hope, their light, their inspiration.

Just a little past thirty, and he feels like it’s been years since he’s slept well, centuries since he last believed that he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Dino-san?”

Pull yourself away from that window and deal with it, he tells himself. Terrible mistake, really, wandering over there in the first place. Sure, maybe he couldn’t have expected it. What were the chances, really? Coming to the Estate, a place that’s rapidly becoming the only safe zone he’s got left, only to spot the silhouette of the one he’s tried that hard to pull away from.

“Dino-san… is everything all right?”

“Ahaha, yeah. Sorry… drifted a bit there, didn’t I?”

Move, turn away. Run and smile and pretend, before he’s forced to watch that one walk away from him, all over again.

 **Eminence grise.**

She feels him calling to her the moment she shuts her eyes – it is nothing but a little tug on the edges of strings wrapped about her heart, but his hold upon her has always been absolute. So she pulls herself away from the Fold and walks between the dreams of the people in the Estate, flitting over the borders of memory and imagination in search of him. She finds him hiding between the thoughts of a plumber and the nightmare of a little boy, in a realm uniquely his own.

Black-and-red checkered marble floors, furniture neatly arranged on the ceiling save the bathtub in the center and mirrors all around. The man himself is lounging back in the bathtub, swathed in black leather, conducting “Ode to Joy” with idle swings of his foot, humming along. The water that ought to be in the tub is flowing up to the ceiling instead, from the reversed head of the faucet.

Strange, beautiful and twisted, compared to their meeting places of old, but it seems to reflect more of Rokudo Mukuro than it ever has in the past. Chrome takes everything in with one look, and arranges herself accordingly: a dress, simple and white, to give to the room what it lacks.

“Mukuro-sama.”

“My dear Chrome.”

He’s turning and reaching for her, and she meets him halfway, bringing her cheek against his palm and settling herself down on one side of the bathtub.

“You really do come running whenever I ask you to, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

His laughter is a warm and low sound in her ears. His affection, in the gloved fingers losing themselves in the waves of her hair. She mirrors the gesture, by reaching out to snag the end of his ponytail and gentle rake her fingers through their tangles.

“So. How have things been?”

And oddly, to such a simple question, Chrome finds that there are no definitive answers.

 **Fidelity in adversity.**

“You’re here. You’re _never_ here unless something’s up. The hell’s with that?”

“Ken. Language.”

But Chrome does not mind – she has never minded, because she knows the amount of railing that Joushima Ken does at her is directly proportional to how much regard he holds for her. A marked improvement, from their younger years. The years where she might as well have not existed, in their little circle of three.

“He is right, though. Why have you come this time?”

“We need our weapon.”

Kaki Chikusa has always possessed the strange ability to measure everything in a single look, and Chrome meets his gaze evenly, unflinching. A full minute before he tilts his head and turns away, and she appreciates this.

Mukuro needs to wear her skin tonight, and all they need to do is cooperate.

“You’re not one of them,” Chikusa tells her later, when the trident’s a welcome weight against her shoulder and she’s ready to go. “Don’t forget that.”

“I will not.”

What she does not tell Chikusa is that she can be with them and with the Family all at once, because that is what she was built to do.

 **Suck it in and cough it out.**

Contrary to popular belief, he never truly believed that he was invincible. Even in his younger days, when he was a kid with a mission and an insatiable thirst for blood and broken bones, he knew, somehow, that he, too, could bend and break. Knew, even after all the flawless victories and effortless kills, that there was something beyond him, something that could reach in and rip him apart. So he kept fighting, kept taking on bigger and worthier targets, kept resting his eyes on whatever’s in front of him and chasing perfection with the full knowledge that he was always going to fall a little short.

It was easier, back then, to tell himself that two feet and a pair of tonfa was all he needed to keep himself from falling. There are times, now, when he wonders when that started to change.

All of this fighting, this systematic obliteration, it is not retreat – he doesn’t retreat, couldn’t run away even if he wanted to. This thing, it’s how he rewrites the order of the world into something he can understand. As such, he does not appreciate interruptions, most especially if they come in the form of another joining him on the battlefield, impaling his targets on the three prongs of a trident before he can remove them for himself.

“Rokudo Mukuro.”

“Hello, Kyouya-kun.”

When they come together in a clash of steel and a lick of flames, Hibari Kyouya decides that maybe this, too, is a way to step back to something normal and familiar. Later, when they’re tangled so close together that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins, he kisses that mouth even as he’s shoving a tonfa against that gut and finds that, for the first time in a long time, that the static’s cleared from his thoughts and he won’t have to keep waking up to the same memory on reverse and rewind in his head.

 **Fists and knees and teeth and elbows.**

As he fucks him nice and violent, as he presses in deep enough to hurt and mixes sweat and saliva and semen and the taste of human skin with every touch and tug and stroke and kiss, Rokudo Mukuro realizes that he may, indeed, be on the brink of losing his favorite toy. That somewhere between their last encounter and this one, Hibari is no longer considering the perpetual here and now of their little arrangement, and looking off, towards something else.

 _Someone_ else, in fact – Mukuro knows this now, knew it the moment he called to Chrome and saw the look in her one good eye. Perhaps, though, he had no need for her to reveal such things to him, only to confirm it.

Distressing, really, because it’s going to be so horribly boring, dealing with a Hibari who’s less the untouchable monster of his younger days and closer to something broken and ridiculously human. Poking a rabid dog that’s lost all its teeth.

He used to think that the Bucking Horse was good for this one, because it made Hibari look for a little cock to top off all that fighting. Now he’s almost sorry that he wasn’t around to stop things before they got out of hand. Before someone decided to fall in love.

Quaint word, that one. Always so much less glamorous than what it implies.

“This will be the last time, I think.”

No questions, no protests – only a downward turn of those pouting lips and a flat look. If he didn’t already know what he knew, it might have been enough to convince Mukuro that he could be imagining the whole thing.

“Your interference has never been welcome anyway.”

“Oya, oya~ you don’t mean that.”

A strike to his face that almost connects, and they’re tangled up in each other again, his arm holding Hibari’s arm out straight behind them both to keep the tonfa from breaking his skin, Hibari’s teeth nipping his bottom lip.

“It wounds me, you know,” he remarks in a low voice when they’re done, “how you seem to think that with enough kissing, you’ll start tasting him instead of me.”

And Mukuro pulls away, melting into nothing before he ever hears Hibari’s response.

 **Penelope fish.**

Because the frequency of the Cloud Guardian’s visits to the Estate drop back down to a relatively normal level in the succeeding weeks (that is, an almost total absence from the Vongola Family in general), Chrome begins to wonder if it was fixed, somehow, in the one evening that she fell asleep and let Mukuro wear her as he pleased.

A month later, however, she spots Hibari again, walking towards the Boss’ office. He is a collection of stilted movement, empty eyes and a number of other small and painful things, and there are no words. Perhaps there never were any words, for silence has always been her strong point – she has always been led to believe that it is not her place to know or understand everything.

Strange, then, that she suddenly wants to understand. Wants to speak, to move, to offer some way of setting things right. They are Family and distance is what defines them, but she knows, too, when something is no longer the way it’s supposed to be.

By the time it occurs for Chrome to speak, however, there’s no trace of Hibari in the hallway beyond the receding trail of his shadow across the far wall.

 **Dying is what, to live, each has to do.**

Because there’s been a storm in his head since he last spoke with Mukuro, Hibari decides that it’s an unhealthy business, all of this thinking. He resolves, privately, to think no more than what is necessary.

Of course, that does not prevent him from sleeping, which does not prevent him from dreaming, and that ultimately leads to remembering. So he sleeps even less, and fills the extra hours with more missions, more fighting, and more time away from halls and rooms full of dead echoes and living memories.

 **Love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself.**

“A bare world hardly suits you.”

Mukuro has come into her dream without warning or prior invitation, breaking through the Fold in order to stand and regard his surroundings with a studious disinterest. He’s a tall and thin shadow, cut out against the white not-sky, lightless suns and gray pillars. Not a spot of color on him, save his eyes.

Chrome smoothes out the folds of her skirt, ready to move away from the edge of the disc she was sitting at in order to greet him. He lifts his hand, smiles, and moves to join her instead.

“It is easier for me to think here,” she murmurs, by way of explanation.

“And your thoughts run deep enough to require this sort of emptiness?”

He is teasing her: she is aware of this. The knowledge, however, does little to comfort her. He seems to know that, because he speaks again, to fill her silence with his words.

“It bothers you. The Skylark’s fall.”

“He… he should not be this way, Mukuro-sama.”

“Oh?”

“I think so. I want to fix things.”

“Why?”

“Because he matters to you.”

“And that is your only reason?”

Is it not the only reason that she could have? She could ask (wants to ask), but the words are frozen in her throat.

“My dear Chrome,” he says, as though he were addressing a child, “your feelings have always been your own. Your thoughts as well.”

Mukuro’s fingers are on her cheek, but it’s the weight of his gaze that Chrome feels more. She does not answer him – can’t, really – but he knows this as well.

“Perhaps, this time, it was never really about what I wanted.”

A light chuckle, and Mukuro is on his feet again, leaving his vessel’s dream behind.

 **Dutch courage.**

The next day, Chrome comes in with the Boss’ fifth-thing-in-the-morning-coffee and there is no one in there but him and Hibari. The silence in the room is the sort of silence one gets after heated words have flown about and nothing’s been resolved.

“…Thank you, Chrome. I am not going to back down on this one, Hibari-san,” the Boss goes on to say, as though he didn’t just turn and smile at Chrome when she came in. “Bring a companion, or I am going with you myself.”

“Herbivores will disrupt my mission.”

“ _Family_ won’t.”

Chrome sets the mug down.

“Let me go, Boss.”

She realizes, in the next moment, that perhaps this is the first time that Hibari Kyouya has looked at her – really _looked_ at her – in years. Nevertheless, it’s the shadow of something else that he’s noticing: the other Mist Guardian, not the girl with his ring.

That is fine, for the moment.

“I will not hinder you,” she says.

Hibari leaves. Tsuna sips his coffee, considers his options, and pushes a manila folder over the desk and under her fingers.

“Details for the mission. Are you sure about this?” he asks. The look in his eyes is earnest. Chrome pinches the edge of the folder between the pads of her fingers and smiles, because she’ll end up lying, she thinks, the moment she speaks.

 **In the midst of this world / we stroll along the roof of hell / gawking at flowers.**

It goes well, for the most part. He moves in first, tonfa out and haloed in the spiked clouds of his box weapons; she follows, erasing whatever lay beneath his attention and covering their trail with mist. She understands, now, the reason why the Boss had been adamant on accompanying his Cloud Guardian, even if it meant risking his ire. Not even a weapon of Hibari’s caliber could walk out of a fight like this one unscathed.

They’re fighting under the rain for hours, not quite back-to-back but close together nonetheless, razing opposite sides of the same battlefield. There were many targets, so many, in fact, that when it finally ends it takes Chrome some time to realize that there really isn’t anyone left to kill.

Somewhere behind her, Hibari has finished kicking a man’s ribcage into his heart. She turns to watch him wipe the blood off of his face with the back of his sleeve and learn to breathe again. His eyes are gray, and fever bright.

Chrome is left to find her own way back home.

When a new job comes, the Boss informs Chrome that she will support the Cloud Guardian once again. He asks her if she minds. She tells him that she does not.

Hibari says nothing at all.

 **A conversation begins with a lie.**

“You should have never come with me.”

It’s been seven weeks since she’s taken up her new role as the Cloud Guardian’s shadow. They’re on their ninth job together, moving through the narrow paths of an old section of the capital, between aging buildings and over cobblestone streets.

This is the first time he has ever talked to her and said something other than an insult.

“I work best when I am alone. I need no watchdog.”

“I can help you.”

“You are deluding yourself.”

They hit an intersection just as the light changes. They stand side by side in the crowd, watching the traffic rather than each other, separate from the noise.

“You are _his_ ,” he says in a low voice. “He has no reason to keep tabs on me now.”

“I am not doing it for him.”

They part at the next junction. When they see each other again, it’s on the battlefield. There’s no time for words.

 **A poet speaks with blood.**

Their thirteenth job ends in a bloody lobby and Chrome up pinned against the wall with a tonfa under her chin.

She expected this, of course – she’s been close enough to Hibari as of late, familiar enough now to peel away the barriers, read through his irritation. He said nothing, did nothing but kill a little faster and direct her away from him with sharp words and a cutting gaze, but she knew what he could not bring himself to ask her. Silence has always been his best weapon. Pride, his form of retreat.

There’s something new in his eyes as he looks at her, something shattered and desperate and totally raw. He expresses what he cannot say in the amount of force he applies against her throat. She lets her arms drop to her sides and waits.

Sixty seconds later, Hibari is gone and Chrome can breathe again.

 **Against all reason.**

They see each other first the very next day, first thing in the morning. Hibari walks down the steps leading up to the Vongola Estate; Chrome is waiting for him by the arches by the driveway. Kusakabe brings the car around, and the both of them slip inside.

They don’t talk about it.

 **Monster hospital.**

The Family hears about the next few jobs from secondary sources – extensive Foundation operations, all high risk and high gain, and it’s enough to send Storm into a fit over how he could have possibly missed out because he doesn’t miss out on anything. It is only after the Boss has waved away all of the apologies and dismissed Storm that he turns to Chrome and asks, without a look and a hand on her arm, if she knew. She doesn’t exactly answer him, only says that she’s on it and it will be fine.

She goes to Hibari’s rooms after dinner, even though the maids insist that he hasn’t been in the Estate since last week. He’s on the couch, threading a needle as he squints at a wound on his arm in the lamplight. His shirt and coat are on the floor, ruined beyond repair. There’s a tall bottle of whiskey and pool of bloodied bandages beside them.

Chrome says nothing, only shuts the door and comes around, to arrange herself at his side and puts a hand on his arm. The look he sends her is as sharp as the blow he dealt her, on their last mission together. His silence, oddly, cuts even deeper.

She draws in a slow breath and moves again, letting her hand come to rest on his. Another moment, and she draws the needle away from his fingers.

“You are shaking too much,” she offers, by way of explanation. “It will end faster if I do it.”

She is expecting him to contradict her. She is expecting him to take the needle back, order to her to leave, or perhaps kick her out himself.

Hibari turns away and picks the bottle of whiskey up. Chrome gathers herself together with another slow breath, and begins to work.

The hour passes, in disinfectant swabs, alcohol, bandages and a pool of thread. When she finally finishes, she looks up and finds Hibari looking back at her.

“If it is not for him,” he says, too quietly, “then…?”

Chrome runs her fingers along the stitches on his arm, traces along his elbow and up, until her hand is on his cheek. Hibari’s eyes are a different gray under this light: hollow, remarkably clear.

She lets her touch linger for just one moment before she withdraws, and leaves.

 **A clumsy ersatz angel.**

At midnight, Chrome wakes up in time to hear someone come into her room, and crawl between the sheets beside her. A heartbeat later, there are arms wrapping themselves about her waist, and face pressing itself against the nape of her neck.

“Hibari…?”

“Let me sleep.”

She obeys.

 **We touch, we hold, we keep one another free.**

Dino is out with his fiancé when he spots them on the opposite side of the street. Hibari Kyouya first, cutting across the concrete in a tailored suit, demanding the attention of many just by breathing. Kusakabe is at his heels, conversing with someone else on one cellular phone and typing up a message with another. And then, Chrome.

They don’t notice him, of course; Rome is Vongola territory and they have nothing to fear. Besides, Hibari has always been a cut above the rest and therefore has no need to pay attention to the sweat and swell of humanity on a Sunday morning. Perhaps, though, that those are not the only reasons. That much becomes obvious in a moment, when the Cloud Guardian finally turns and waits, for the quiet shadow of a woman behind him to step up and walk at his side.

It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it’s supposed to, just a pang made of a wounded memory and a momentary loss of breath. Perhaps it doesn’t because somehow – maybe – things are better this way.

Dino’s fingers twitch. He brings out his cigarettes.

“May I have a light, _amore_?”

“Oh, of course! Are you all right?”

She’s noticed something, it seems, because worry is furrowing up the fine lines of her face. He pats her hand and smiles.

“Yes.”

And for the first time in a long time, he means it.


End file.
